Another Wide-Right FG Try Sinks the Bills

The Buffalo Bills sure don’t look like the team that began the season by winning its first four games. A four-game losing streak has dropped Buffalo to 5-5 and muddled its playoff chances. The latest loss came Monday when Cleveland’s Phil Dawson hit a 56-yard field goal in the final two minutes to beat the Bills, 29-27. Buffalo had a chance to win it, but Rian Lindell missed wide right from 46 yards with 38 seconds left, reminding Buffalo fans of the painful memory of Scott Norwood’s miss in the same direction against the New York Giants in Super Bowl XXV. Buffalo has games remaining against Miami, the New York Jets and New England, all fellow AFC East teams that have beaten the Bills and have better records, too.

One culprit on Monday night: quarterback Trent Edwards. He passed for just 148 yards on 26 attempts, with one touchdown, and he threw three interceptions. Buffalo News columnist Jerry Sullivan doesn’t hold back his criticism. “Edwards was horrible last night. This time, you can point to the quarterback and say he cost them the game,” Sullivan writes. “Edwards threw three interceptions in the first quarter alone, allowing a mediocre Cleveland team to take control of the game and taking his own home fans out of the game for a stretch of the opening half.”

Sullivan’s colleague Bob DiCesare excoriates the Bills’ poor offensive showing. “Admit it. This Buffalo passing game has become unwatchable,” DiCesare writes in the Buffalo News. “Opponents negate Lee Evans and dare the Bills to beat them with James Hardy, or Roscoe Parrish, or with 22 flat passes to running backs Marshawn Lynch and Fred Jackson. It’s like watching an inchworm take a 3 1/2-hour stroll. Uphill.”

Quarterback Brady Quinn, making only his second pro start, didn’t have an outstanding game for the Browns — he threw for just 185 yards on 36 attempts — but he still impressed the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Terry Pluto. “Quinn looked as if he has been through this before,” Pluto writes. “He was not bothered by the noise from a hostile crowd, or by a variety of Buffalo stampedes and blitzes. He was often knocked down after making throws, but stayed away from costly sacks. He was often knocked down after making throws; Buffalo credited with five quarterback hits. It seemed like more.”

Dawson was the real star for Cleveland, a team that had leads of 13-0, 23-13 and 26-20 on a cold night in Buffalo. The calm, cool kicker made all five of his field-goal attempts. “This 56-yarder never was in doubt,” Patrick McManamon writes in the Akron Beacon Journal. “One of the team’s true pros made it, straight and pure. How fitting for Dawson, a good guy and a pro who shows up every day to just do his job.”

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Pittsburgh’s 11-10 victory Sunday over San Diego ended in chaos. First, the Steelers’ Troy Polamalu returned a failed lateral for a touchdown that would have made the score 17-10, pending the extra-point try. Polamalu’s TD was big, as it ensured anyone betting on Pittsburgh would have beaten the spread. But the officials later ruled the lateral an illegal forward pass, negating the score. That’s where things get interesting. Later that night, referee Scott Green ruled the TD should have counted. As Alan Schwarz writes in the New York Times, that botched call cost bettors millions.

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Out-of-control players aren’t ruining the NBA’s image these days. It’s owner behavior that’s increasingly in the spotlight and tarnishing the league. The latest example is Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who was charged Monday with insider trading over shares he sold in Mamma.com in 2004. Yahoo Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski mentions three other owners — the Minnesota Timberwolves’ Glen Taylor, the Los Angeles Clippers’ Donald Sterling and the New Orleans Hornets’ George Shinn — whose bad behavior is tolerated in ways that wouldn’t be for the league’s players. “Cuban happens to be one of the owners responsible for so much good, so much change, in the sport,” Wojnarowski writes. “He saved his franchise, the way that Sterling and Shinn and Taylor destroyed their own. Until he beats the government rap, though, Cuban is one more scar for the sport.”

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The Big Three auto makers are hemorrhaging money, the housing market is in the dumps, companies are laying off workers by the thousands and your stock portfolio may be in shambles. But if you’re like any other baseball fan, you’re thinking big-picture: “Can my team afford to sign CC Sabathia or Manny Ramirez?” (A Yankees fan would probably wonder about signing both, and why not? New York had a $209.1 million payroll last season.) New York Times columnist William C. Rhoden notes that sports leagues, particularly Major League Baseball, tend to thrive when the economy isn’t. “Baseball, to a greater extent than the N.F.L. and the N.B.A., is dependent on gate receipts,” Rhoden writes. “When families begin to feel the economic pinch and stay home rather than take a long trip, many choose to attend baseball games. And there is simply the attraction of sport as an escape hatch, a two- to three-hour refuge.”

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Former USC tailback Charles White didn’t have much of an NFL career, but he’ll always have the Heisman Trophy he won in 1979. But only in his heart. White, who played for the Cleveland Browns and the Los Angeles Rams, sold the trophy in 2000 to pay back taxes. His coach at USC and with the Rams, John Robinson, feels sympathetic. “White enjoyed one great season in the NFL, winning the league rushing title in 1987 with the Rams, but mostly he was a disappointment, his career marred by cocaine abuse,” Jerry Crowe writes in the Los Angeles Times. “Still, when White announced his retirement in 1989, Robinson called him ‘the toughest man I’ve ever coached,’ a sentiment the coach recently repeated.”

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Eri Yoshida, a 16-year-old high-school knuckleballer who emulates Tim Wakefield, is about to become Japan’s first professional female player. She was drafted this week by the Kobe 9 Cruise of the new Japanese League. “The news of Yoshida’s signing — she was chosen in the seventh round — was met with some skepticism that the league might be trying to grab headlines by naming a woman,” Eric Talmadge writes for the Associated Press. “In that, they certainly succeeded — Yoshida’s photo was all over the morning news Tuesday, and she was featured in a profile in the prestigious Asahi, a major national newspaper.”

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Trying to get an edge on your opponents in the NHL has changed tremendously over the years. In the 1970s, Toronto coach Red Kelly had Maple Leafs players believing in “pyramid power” in order to be a better hockey team. It worked for Leafs star Darryl Sittler, who had an NHL-record 10 points in a game against Boston after he placed his sticks above the miniature pyramids. Things aren’t that weird in today’s NHL, but Vancouver Canucks general manager Mike Gillis is unconventional in the ways he tries to improve his team’s performance, according to the Globe and Mail’s Matthew Sekeres. Among other things, Gillis consulted a military sleep expert and had players wear biorhythm bracelets to gain information on their sleeping patterns, Sekeres writes.

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Basketball legend Pete Newell, who coached the University of California to the NCAA championship in 1959 and the United States to Olympic gold in 1960, died Monday at age 93. The San Diego Union-Tribune’s Hank Wesch spoke with some of the “Godfather’s” disciples, including Bobby Knight.

– Tip of the Fix cap to readers Don Hartline and David V. J. Roth.

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Comments (4 of 4)

The state-mandated waiting period has elapsed, and I finally have the middle name I deserve. Please re-/de-correct, Carl! (Eh, it's good)

Editor Comment

2:43 pm November 18, 2008

Carl Bialik wrote:

That's fixed until you legally change your middle initial.

2:36 pm November 18, 2008

David Roth wrote:

I like that new middle initial. I may even use it in lieu of my actual middle initial of "J."

12:09 pm November 18, 2008

Doug M in St. Louis wrote:

I watched the Steelers-Charges finale on the CBS east feed. I could not believe what obvious botched call that was at the end. Do theses refs lose their minds in the heat of battle? I thought instant replay reviews could not be used to call penalties that had not been called. And why did the alleged occurance of an illegal forward lateral negate the remainder of the play? The TD should have counted. I think someone in stripes was betting on SD covering the spread!

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